Kuala Lampur, July 28 -- I went to a shopping mall yesterday and realised something strange about myself. I've started picking where to park based on whether I have to 'angkat ketiak' to tap my card at the boom gate. If I can just drive in and out without winding down the window or reaching for anything, that place gets an automatic five-star experience in my book.

It sounds petty but it's real. The smallest frictions, like rolling down windows in the rain, mis-taps, or low card balances, shape how we move. That's why number plate scanning tech, officially known as automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), the kind that lets you glide through without touching anything, has quietly become one of the most useful things we've adopted.

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